


some silhouettes

by digitalcatnip



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Blood Drinking, Both these kids are traumatized but it's okay, Fluff and Angst, Hand Jobs, It's a bit graphic actually, M/M, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt, Post-Book 2: Wayward Son, Some canon-level violence, Vampires, and a brief casual mention/joke about suicidal ideation, lots of fire metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digitalcatnip/pseuds/digitalcatnip
Summary: I know that man was under Thrall and it wasn’t in any way consensual, but there was something about the way he leaned his head back, neck exposed and eyes half-lidded.  The way he groaned like those teeth sinking into his flesh was what he’d been searching for all his life…I can’t tell if it was appealing to the vampire desire to consume, or something a little more...human.Meaning I wonder if I really just wanted to bite Simon and have him make that noise.After returning from America, Baz practices his newly discovered ability and debates with himself on what it means, and Simon tries to find some way to fill the void that fighting magical creatures has left.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 15
Kudos: 97





	some silhouettes

**Author's Note:**

> _Let's go out in flames so everyone knows who we are  
>  'Cause these city walls never knew that we'd make it this far  
> We've become echoes, but echoes are fading away  
> So let's dance like two shadows, burning out a glory day_  
> Silhouette - Aquilo  
> 
> 
> This is the first fanfic I've written in like six years and this started out as a short-form thing from Baz's perspective only and turned into....this. The demon of "I want to wax poetic about angst and death and rabbit eyes and also Give The Succ" possessed my hands for a week and this is my infernal offering to you, fandom. It was a fun exercise to write fanfic of a book and try to find the balance in voice and writing style and format. Hopefully you enjoy!
> 
> Also, I'm American, so I apologize. I did my best, but I don't have a British sensitivity reader at my disposal :p

###  **Baz**

It’s fucking embarrassing, this vampire thing. Teeth slide out from somewhere I still can’t seem to locate, the sun turns me sooty, everything is too loud and too bright and smells too much all the time. I have to drink blood to keep my brain functioning but if I don’t eat normal food I’ll starve my body and die anyway (again.) I the smell of peoples’ heartbeats makes me nauseated and hungry all at once, like my insides are trying to remind me I’m not supposed to fucking exist. That I am the thing that shouldn’t have been possible, pale-faced and cold-handed with magic still running through my veins that are otherwise empty. Too much of it in me, too much of it around me. All that power pressed inside a body that was no longer meant to hold it.

I try not to think about it. Focus on something else, violin, lecture, Simon. But what do I distract myself with when the diploma’s on the wall and the days between uni classes are empty? (Besides Snow. He’s still here, mostly. Physically. I still don’t know about any more than that.) What do you do in the summer when there’s nothing to do but hear the pulse in everyone around you?

Nobody says anything but it doesn’t matter. They aren’t the ones sitting in alleys and the backlots of supermarkets clouded with concealing magic charming rats into their mouths. They aren’t the ones worried they’ll snap one day (again?) and become the monster they were told about as children to scare them into obedience. Snow tried to comfort me, pointing at the new appendages and reminding me that dragons are also thought to be monsters, but having wings and a tail doesn’t make him a threat to everyone around him. (“I mean, I keep whacking everyone with them,” I can hear him saying. But every time he’s near me all I can smell is the blood inside his body and how badly I want to taste it. How badly I’ve never stopped wanting to taste it.)

You learn a lot about death when you have to kill things to eat them. You learn the easiest way to kill a rat is to bash its head against the concrete. You learn to hold a bird’s wings down or else they’ll beat you in the face before you even get your fangs in them. You learn that rabbits’ necks are easy to break with only your hands but their legs will tear crosses down your arms and you won’t be sure your mates believe you when you say that you’re okay.

In the movies things die and they lay still but in reality they want to stay alive. You can cast spells and use Thralls but their brains and their bodies still fight you when you end them, the last little sparks of life. Mouths open, eyes wide. They twitch and move long after their hearts stop and sometimes you are scared you’re hurting them when you bite down and that last little bit of electricity shoots up their limbs. You just have to try and comfort yourself in knowing that even if they weren’t all the way senseless, they won’t be for long.

Did you know that white rabbits’ eyes are only red because there’s blood in them? Do you know what they look like once all that blood is gone?

I do.

  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

I think Baz is getting thirsty. I mean, like more than usual. He’s always a little bit thirsty, just because he’s the vampire equivalent of a vegan - only eating animals and not people. There’s that whole thing with normal vegans needing to take some kind of vitamin that you don’t get in plants or they get sick; I’m assuming it’s the same with vampires. There’s just something in human blood they need and if they don’t get it they get that kind of, y’know. Gray faced, eye bags kind of look. Baz has always looked like that, and it’s really a good look, don’t get me wrong, but it’s looking a bit less “I don’t get sun and it’s sexy” and more “I am on death’s doorstep” again lately.

I mean he doesn’t show it, really. He’s good at pretending he’s not dying on the inside. But I can tell he’s tired, he slouches more in his chair and he hasn’t played music in weeks. He gets like this, something about being guilty for having to drink blood. Eventually his paranoia will overcome it and he’ll go find something to quench his thirst, and then he’ll be normal again, back to himself. But until then I just have to wonder if I should say anything or just ignore the fact that the only thing he has the energy for is laying on the sofa and watching telly with me after uni. Which, don’t get me wrong, is great. Fantastic. Probably in my top ten things to do with him. But I can tell it’s not really what he’d rather be doing.

But at least, I guess, he’s using up what little energy he has to be with me.

I still don’t really know what happened in America. I mean I _know_ what happened - Penny got dumped by her boyfriend who hadn’t been her boyfriend for a year, we murdered some vampires at a faire in Nebraska, nearly got eaten alive by a wereskunk and a demon goat in a quiet zone, we saved Agatha from being a guinea pig - but I don’t really know what _happened_ . To me. To Baz. To _us_.

I do want him, I am pretty sure. I mean, I _wasn’t_ sure for a little while, but it’s hard to tell myself that I should break up with him or that I’d be better off alone after snogging for like an hour in the back of a pickup truck covered in skunk stench that I stopped smelling because he was way, way more interesting. In fact, I can say I love him. At least I can say it to myself. Trying to say it to him makes my mouth feel like it’s full of bees and my entire brain fills up with static. Just like when he tries to kiss me. Or touch me. Or show me affection in nearly any way.

It’s not like I _want_ to panic every time my boyfriend tries to hit on me. I tried to ignore it and hope it went away at first, it got harder to push down after a while. Harder to pretend I wasn’t panicking inside. And then, well. Depression is kind to no one.

Maybe one day it’ll come out of my mouth like I wish it would. At least I can think it, and believe it. At least now I don’t feel like I’m bringing him down by existing. At least I feel a little bit worthy of him again. At least we went to America and I learned a few things about myself. (In several ways. But importantly: in ways that pertain to Baz.)

Like, it’s kind of embarrassing. To say that fighting is what gets me going. But I shouldn’t really be surprised - after all I spent most of my adolescent life fighting in one way or another. Sparring, fighting magical monsters, rowing with Baz, and then, well, that whole saving the world thing. I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not at risk of dying. Which is _absolutely fucked up,_ but there’s nothing I can really do about it.

Except, I guess, begin a life of crime. But I think Penny would actually murder me.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I can’t get Lamb out of my head. I keep seeing his practically alive-looking face in my head every time I eat, every time I drink, every time I close my goddamn eyes. I keep trying to keep my fangs in or not wholly kill things when I get thirsty but it’s so fucking hard when my body is always so malnourished that my impulse control is virtually nonexistent. I’ve read about normal people who aren’t vampires getting cravings for rare steak when they’re anaemic. That’s probably the closest thing I can describe it as. I sit down and think “okay, time to try again,” and I end up blanking out and wake up with someone’s pet cat in my hands, completely dead and drained, collar bell jingling louder than a church ring as I throw its body away from me in horror.

The number of missing posters around my dorm and Snow’s flat is beginning to make me paranoid. I’ve seemingly decimated the rat population in both places and there’s nothing else plentiful enough to turn to instead. Birds don’t have near enough blood to be worth it in the numbers I’d have to summon, not to mention the cats are already doing enough population damage to them (so I really shouldn’t feel bad for eating pets, but I also know what it felt like to lose my dog. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.) I miss having the Wood at Watford be an option. I’d give anything for a good-sized deer to just walk out of the shadows and into my hands every fortnight or so, and my attempts at finding a spell with which to charm the local foxes to me have thus far been failures.

I can’t stop thinking about the smell of that man that Lamb drank out of in Vegas. It has always been a test of my self-control to smell human blood - skint knees in football, a papercut in maths. Simon’s bloody noses as he’d blow into our room after getting the shit beat out of him by something or other the Humdrum sent after him. I’ve always been good at controlling it. I will not give in to my base instincts. I may be a monster, but I’m not a _monster_.

But Merlin and Morgana, the smell and sight of blood freely given, not _taken_ , was a lot to handle. I’ve spent most of my life resisting temptation, so it wasn’t like there was any danger of me biting anyone, but I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t glad Simon showed up when he did, despite the drama it caused later. I know that man was under Thrall and it wasn’t in any way consensual, but there was something about the way he leaned his head back, neck exposed and eyes half-lidded. The way he groaned like those teeth sinking into his flesh was what he’d been searching for all his life…I can’t tell if it was appealing to the vampire desire to consume, or something a little more...human.

Meaning I wonder if I really just wanted to bite Simon and have him make that noise.

Also meaning I have imagined that exact scenario every night since then.

It really is a good thing I have the world’s greatest self control.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good meal. Like I said, there’s not a lot of vermin around anymore and I’m too far from the woods to hunt something else unless I make a special trip. Before America I would occasionally take a drive out into the countryside and have a poor hapless sheep for tea, but mutton just doesn’t have the same appeal to me now. And so I sit here dying of thirst in the back garden of my parents’ house, trying to convince myself that no one will notice if I walk into the forest and not come out for hours.

They’ve spent my entire life pretending they didn’t know, and I’ve spent my entire life denying it all anyway.

I don’t really like the woods anymore. There is simultaneously too much and too little sound here; I have no heartbeat to rush blood through my ears, so I hear the nothing too cleanly. Birds sing in the canopy but the trees baffle the breeze. Little things skitter away from my feet as I walk, but if someone were to call me from just beyond the tree line, I’d probably never hear them.

The woods were what kept me alive at Watford, they and the rats in the crypts, but they were also almost what killed me. Me, and the woods. My own self-loathing and the fire that it started. _Tyger tyger burning bright, come to set himself alight._

I don’t think about it. Simon goes to therapy but Pitches suck it up. My sleeves are rolled to my elbows so my wand is in my back pocket, and I reach behind me to retrieve it, more for something to focus on than anything. I’m not about to call deer up this close to the edge of the woods. My family doesn’t need to see that. Nobody needs to see that. Not even Simon, though it’s a little late for that now. Doesn’t mean it’s not still embarrassing.

There’s something suffocating about the way the trees are so close together, the light filtered through the leaves above and softened even more. Dark, but still bright enough to see, even without supernatural vision. It felt obtrusive to speak loudly, so I crouch in the middle of my path and whisper **_Doe, a deer_** to the woods, close my eyes, and wait.

It’s not a doe, but thankfully it also isn’t huge. Not that I couldn’t eat a whole stag, but I also care about preserving my food sources for the future. This little guy is maybe a year old, eyes bright if not a little glazed over from the magic, his coat practically shining in the dappled late afternoon light. He has the beginnings of antler nubs, not quite starting to erupt in the late summer warmth.

Yes, it also bothers me that I know this much about deer.

Usually I would kill it here, use some of that supernatural vampire strength to twist its neck in grossly unnatural ways until the connective tissue between the bones snapped, holding it by the head, out of the way of those razor sharp hooves, until it stopped thrashing. But this time I just reach up and put my hands on the sides of its face and gently pull it to its knees.

I’d never really looked at a deer this close before. Not truly, anyway. I’ve sunk my teeth into many but that was always more of a shameful act that I wanted to be done with as soon as possible. I’d never paid attention to the delicate way its legs fold underneath it as it settles into the leaf litter, the way its ears swivel to listen to the world around it. Never felt the warmth of its breath against my lap.

I’m too thirsty to keep my fangs from popping the second the deer lays down in front of me. I’m hoping I can stop before he’s dead. How much blood can something lose before it dies? Maybe I should have looked that up, but there’s no service in the woods. We’re all alone out here.

I’m used to the bodies still being warm but I’m not used to heartbeats. I’m not ready for the feeling of the blood actually rushing into my mouth without having to take a deliberate pull. It hits the back of my throat and gags me, and I spend the next minute coughing up blood through my nose, ruining my previously excellent track record of not getting my lunch all over me. What a good look; I’m glad I wore a black shirt. It’s smeared all over my hands, my lips, and despite the wound not actively bleeding, there’s a huge stain on the deer’s pelt where it spluttered out of my stupid mouth and onto its neck. The deer huffed softly but did not move, lying still in my lap as I caught my breath again.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it, because this fucking sucks, having to do this. Having to consume living (or recently living,) things to survive. I still eat meat (in the normal way, with your mouth, not your fangs,) but I’m a coward. I buy it packaged in plastic from the supermarket and it’s easy to make myself believe that it wasn’t an animal once upon a time. I can’t even look the animals I drink in the eye. If I was forced to confront my other meals as well, It’d be hard to convince myself I still need to eat.

Despite it all I don’t want to die. Not anymore. Not again. Not for real. I bite the deer again and I’m ready for the flow this time, and it goes a lot smoother. I can feel him settle into my hands, growing heavy, his breath deepening. I’m probably taking too much, but I don’t know how to stop. There’s some kind of outward force keeping my mouth on that vein, I can’t let go. 

But I did. I just did, when I choked, I let go and the deer didn’t die. It also didn’t grow cold and gray in my hands and sprout its own set of long, sharp teeth.

I am a god of willpower. I can do this. I can let go of the deer. I can end my reign of terror.

I squeeze my eyes shut and see Lamb in that restaurant in Vegas, his hands on mine, stone-cold serious. “You’re a man, not a monster,” he said, and I repeat this mantra to myself and will my fangs to retract. Slowly. Painfully. It feels like someone wrenching them back into my mouth or wherever it is they go (maybe I should find out. Maybe I should look at myself in the mirror for once.) I pull my face away from the deer and my jaw is locked open which hurts like absolute hell but I stopped. I stopped. _I stopped._

The deer’s eyes are unfocused and its head is lolling around as I drop its head into my lap but _I stopped_. There is no fresh blood anywhere; the puncture wounds barely visible beneath the fur. Its mouth opens a little to gasp and its tongue is pale and it can’t get back up when I let it go and I realize in horror that I still exsanguinated it because my control is virtually nonexistent. But I stopped.

Not in time, but I did it.

It wouldn’t be right to let the deer die of shock here on the forest floor so I reluctantly finish what I started and lay it down to rest. At least none of them will go to waste out here. In a few weeks I’m sure a fairy ring will form around its bones, nourished by its body. Better than the birds and the cats that end up who knows where, whisked away by magic.

My hands are shaking. I can feel adrenaline racing through my newly-replenished bloodstream. I was full but I wanted something else, I wanted to try again. I wanted to run to the bus station where there was WiFi and look up how much blood I could take out of every single animal before it suffered too much trauma so I could learn what that quantity felt like in my mouth. I wanted to stop the cycle of guilt that kept me toeing the line.

And then I thought about what it’d be like to feel Simon’s pulse under my lips in a completely new way.

All my life I’ve tried not to think about it out of the fear that I would. That I’d sink my teeth into him and suck him dry, that I’d destroy the only good thing I had in the world. 

You either know what human blood tastes like or you don’t. The thought of crossing that line had haunted my nightmares for years, that I’d lose some part of me I could never regain. That I’d have knowledge I could never unknow. That I’d be damned to have gained it. Murderer. Monster. _Vampire_.

But now. But now.

If there was a way to give in, to let go, but safely. Consensually. Would I take it?

If he opened his veins for me, would I consume him? This boy whose fire I craved so desperately it nearly sent me up in flames?

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


“I need to get into martial arts. Or kickboxing. Something like that.”

Penny looks up at me with a confused expression on her face. She’s hunched over a mountain of uni textbooks from her elective summer courses but as far as I know she doesn’t have an exam coming up. “Why?” she asks.

I shrug. “Dunno. Exercise. Lose weight or something. I don’t want to keep laying around the flat all day when you’re at uni and work.”

“ _You_ could get a job,” she says. “I am getting better and better and making your wings disappear. You could probably do a normal four-hour retail shift no problem.”

“Sure,” I say, not exactly excited about that prospect. “But I also need a hobby.”

“You can always learn to knit. Paint. Play piano. Or violin, maybe Baz would teach you. Though thinking about it, I don’t want to listen to that for the next six months. But it would be a good way to develop a spell to make me unable to hear instruments.”

“I can’t sit still long enough to knit or paint or play violin,” I say, even though it’s a lie. Well, partly. It’s a lie that when I’m not depressed I always have to be doing something. When I’m depressed I can lay on the sofa and do nothing all day but eat curry chips and watch telly. But I’m not depressed right now. And I want to do something. I’m bouncing on my heels I want to do something so bad. “I need something physical. Pretty much all I did at Watford was kill things; it’s about all I know how to do.”

“That’s not true, Simon Snow,” Penny says, levelling a pencil at my face. “You will not talk about yourself that way. You are immensely talented at many things.”

“Okay fine, it’s what I’m _best_ at, and I kinda enjoyed it. But outside of getting a business license and opening up the magical Mystery, Inc., I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot of killing numpties anymore.”

“Not with that attitude.”

“When was the last time you saw one? They’re not exactly crawling out of the woodworks anymore.”

“Fine, I’ll give you that. So you want to get into taekwondo or something to simulate the feeling of fighting monsters. Makes sense.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” I say, petulant. “I’m being serious.”

“I’m not making fun of you! I’m trying to be supportive!” She sets her pen down and leans back in her chair. “I think it’s a great idea. Do you know how much classes cost?”

I slump onto the sofa. “Probably more than I can afford,” I say. 

“Look it up,” Penny says. “Don’t accept defeat immediately.”

I look it up. “Yeah, more than I can afford.”

“Didn’t you and Baz used to scrap? Maybe you can just fight each other and get both of your workouts.”

There’s a jump in my chest I wasn’t expecting. “We didn’t fight because we enjoyed it,” I say. At least I’m pretty sure he didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy it at the time, I don’t think. It was a weird time, okay. I had a lot going on.

“Maybe now you can.” She is staring at me intensely and I don’t know why.

“I don’t think he’d be into it.”

“Never know until you ask.”

“Why are you so intent on me and Baz scrapping?”

“Because it’s free, and it’d get you up and active again,” Penny says, grinning. “And also because the bee is in my bonnet now about making a specialized silencing spell.”

I can hear the sound of a key in the flat’s front lock. The door slides across the floor, probably pushing the rug out of the way, again, which will drive Penny bonkers.

“Baz,” she calls out through her bedroom door. “If Simon wanted to scrap you would you let him?”  
He was doing the eyebrow thing as he walked into the room. “I dunno, he’s never asked.” 

I will never understand how he can roll out of bed and just look like that. I know he can do this because we have spent the night together before. I wake up looking like a blow-dried sheep who shoved its face in sand, and I’m also probably covered in my own drool. Baz wakes up looking like a runway model. His hair doesn’t tangle, his face doesn’t get those weird lines on it from his pillow. The only difference is his voice is even sexier than it usually is from disuse first thing in the morning.

Anyway, my entire head feels like it’s full of exclamation points because not only is he dressed to the nines at ten AM, but he’s practically _glowing_ with blood. Good. He finally ate.

Penny breaks the moment. “Simon wants to get into martial arts but doesn’t want to pay for it. I told him he should just scrap you like you used to, but he’s convinced you’re too good for that.”

“To be fair,” Baz says, shifting his weight to one leg. “We weren’t exactly having fun back then.”

“You could have fun now, though. You both like fighting.”

“I liked fighting _him_ ,” Baz corrected. “Because I didn’t know how else to get his attention.”

I’ve heard this before, but it still makes my chest tighten. At least it worked out in the end. Mostly.

“I’ve got his attention _now_ ,” he continues. “Haven’t really felt the urge since. Snow definitely has more of a hard-on for fighting than me.”

“I do not,” I say, but he’s right. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t the adrenaline rush of killing a bunch of vampires that had me bending Baz over the boot of the Mustang at that Renaissance Faire. When fighting for your life is the only thing you’ve known for most of it, you kinda get fixated on that feeling. When a large portion of that fight for your life revolved around one particular dark-haired asshole, you start getting some complicated emotions when he’s breathing heavy with exertion and covered in someone else’s blood.

“I never liked hand to hand,” Baz was telling Penny. “I could probably punch through a wall if I really wanted to; I don’t really want to accidentally do that to someone’s face.”

That caught my attention. “Maybe we should do it together.”

Baz’s head snapped towards me. “What?”

“Go to a dojo.”

There’s a little tension in his shoulders that relaxes. “I just said-”

“You don’t want to go hand to hand ‘cause you think you’re gonna knock someone’s block off, yeah.”

“There’s not exactly such a thing as vampire-friendly gyms, Snow.”

I shrug. “It was just an idea. I’m getting bored sitting around all day. I miss America.”

“You miss fighting for your life for days on end, not knowing if you’ll live to make it back home?” Baz asks.

“Yeah, kinda,” I say.

I can see it in his eyes that the answer I gave isn’t the one he wanted.

  
  
  
  
  


It’s apparently common, according to my therapist, anyway, for people who have been in the military or prison or other things like that to struggle to find purpose in life after returning to normality. Who was I supposed to be if I wasn’t the chosen one, the Mage’s heir? Slaying monsters left and right? The saviour of the magical world, Simon Snow? Not having any kind of power anymore, but still unable to blend in with the Normals. Unable to leave the flat and find a new purpose without someone calling the police. I’m pretty sure nobody else enjoyed themselves, but Penny was right. America was good for me.

If nothing else, it was an enlightening trip.

Like I said, apparently the thing I want most in life is to feel like I’m alive. I thought that saving the world and getting the boy was going to be my happily ever after, but it turns out that in real life that’s not how it happens. You still have PTSD and depression and you have this weird mental block every time said boy you are head over heels for tries to make a move on you, even though you’ve been dating for a year. I hate to admit that a road trip was the catalyst to me finding myself again, because Crowley knows that is the most cliché thing on the planet, but here we are.

I learned two things on the drive between Chicago and San Diego: 

  1. Renaissance Faires sell extremely shitty swords.
  2. Baz Pitch is very very attractive even when I’m soaked and he’s full of buckshot. Maybe especially when I’m soaked and he’s full of buckshot. _Especially_ especially when I’m soaked and he’s full of buckshot and he warms me up while we’re backdropped by the most beautiful open starry sky I have ever seen in my life.



Oh, and 3. Flying is a very good time and I wish I could do it more.

(4. Baz looks very good in jeans. This is old news but I figured while I’m making lists, I’d add it here again.)

I think I figured out something important in America and I’m determined to keep hold of it now that I’m back home. I at least have stopped sleeping on the sofa, that’s helped. I can tell everyone’s glad for that. But now I need a reason to stay _off_ of the sofa, because we all know that even if I can get a job, retail is the most soul-sucking thing you could possibly do with your time.

So. Kickboxing. Not as exciting as I thought it’d be. Penny found some kind of weekend class and got me to go after quite a bit of cajoling and doubling up on that **angel gets its wings** spell. (On a related note: it’s getting to where every time she makes my wings and tail go away I spend the rest of the day with Missy Elliot stuck in my head. I have yet to figure out if this is an effect of the spell, or just because _Work It_ is one of the world’s most potent earworms.) It turns out that most weekend sports classes are full of two types of people: middle-aged moms who are struggling to find their identities after their kids start Year Six, and incredibly hench dudes who seem to consume nothing but protein shakes and rice.

And then me. A perfectly average twenty-year old who is better at kicking things than the teacher is, but at least it got me to sweat for some other reason than it being hotter than Satan’s bollocks for the first time in a week. So it was a success in that aspect, anyway. They didn’t actually let us kick each other, though, which was a shame. It would be nice to have someone to actually spar with. Really get the blood pumping.

I had made plans to get dinner with Baz afterwards, just to round out the experiment, so despite my shirt sticking to me in extremely uncomfortable ways, I headed straight to the restaurant to see if maybe being around him after exercising would spark something inside me. It was weirdly hot and sunny that day, which wasn’t exactly helping me not look like I’d just got out of a workout class, but at least it made it easy to find Baz once I arrived. When the sun is out, I really just have to look for the guy sitting in the furthest, shadiest corner of wherever we are.

I guess it’s like, a vampire thing to not sweat because I can’t imagine why he’d wear a flowery dark blue dress shirt and slacks otherwise, but nevertheless he didn’t seem to be uncomfortable at all.

“You’re a sight, aren’t you?” he says wryly, looking at me over his sunglasses.

“Shut up,” I say, sliding into the seat across from him. “I’m hot.”

“Damn right you are.”

That familiar knot in my stomach makes an appearance, but I try to push it down. “Shut up! I mean the temperature. Also I just kicked a sandbag for like an hour.”

“How’d that go anyway?” The waiter had already brought him his drink, which he sipped delicately, half hiding his face behind his hand.

“Eh, kinda boring. We didn’t get to actually fight at all, and I was the only person there under thirty.”

“Unfortunate,” he says, deadpan.

I shrug. “It was worth a try.”

He makes a face at me as I try to steal a sip of his drink, but doesn’t make a move to take it away. “What’s got you all worked up about fighting, anyway? That fed up with Bunce being overly stressed over uni?”

“I’m bored,” I say, though it’s only most of the truth. “And getting squidgy. I don’t want you running off with someone sexier than me.”

Baz raises an eyebrow. “My staying around has nothing to do with your physique, Snow.”

“It was a joke, Baz.” The eyebrow goes down but I can hear his thoughts flinging off into space about whether or not there was a spark of sincerity to my words. “Like actually a joke, ha ha, comedy.”

“You have a shit sense of humour.”

I give him a crooked grin. “At least I have one.”

And we’re back to where we always are, affectionately taking the piss out of one another because apparently that’s just what our relationship is now. Two useless young adults who are terrible for each other, desperately trying to make it work.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I’m feeling good at this restaurant. I’ve had coffee this afternoon but also the equivalent of three rabbits, and all but two of them ran away - maybe a little dazed and hungover, but alive.

I’m getting used to anticipating the blood pressure, the way it gushes into my mouth like biting into a particularly juicy pomegranate. I’ve spent way, way too much time online the past few days researching blood volume and where to draw from different animals most efficiently, trying to make sure I know what I’m doing. Which I don’t, because I’m not a doctor, but the more times I do this the more I’ll learn, the better I’ll get.

The rabbits would normally barely be a snack, but I’ve been at this for a week. I’m practically glowing. I’ve honestly never felt better in my life and I’m starting to wonder why the fuck I didn’t feed more regularly until now.

I mean I know why. It’s because I never felt like my life was worth living if this is what it would be. Having to fight this monstrous thirst for everyone around me. Having to kill everything I fed on. Having to push away the knowledge that my face won’t change for centuries and everyone I love will die and leave me here alone to either become the demon in the tower or light myself on fire at last and join them in the abyss.

But y’know, whatever.

Rabbits smell like fresh grass and dirt and a little bit like pee and their fur is soft and warm in my hands. I brace myself to have my throat opened up by those long, powerful hind legs, but the rabbit just relaxes into my arms, its nose wiggling steadily. His friends lay in the grass around me, appearing as they are simply sunning themselves, not completely mesmerized by magic. I am thankful for the multiple rabbit-related nursery rhymes at my disposal, speaking magic into each one I knew until I felt something work. **_Little bunny Foo-Foo, hopping through the forest,_** I sing softly to them, stroking their velvety ears. The wild ones look so different from the ones you buy in stores. The ones I’m used to eating. The ones I’m used to killing.

They don’t have much blood in them so it’s only a quick sip then they’re back on their feet. One has a full belly and I can smell more than one heartbeat, so she is turned away untasted. _I_ , I think again in Lamb’s voice, _am a man. Not a monster._ I won’t be someone who drinks from children.

It’s easier to pull my fangs back in but it still aches like after the novocaine wears off from getting a filling. A soreness that lingers in my jaw. The rabbits all head home and I settle into the back of a bus, on the way to meet Snow for dinner.

He’s hot and sweaty and my sense of smell is both a blessing and a curse because on one hand he _reeks_ but on the other I can smell his heightened pulse and how it spikes up when I flirt with him. I normally wouldn’t talk like that but I’m full of blood and caffeine and Simon Snow is very handsome when he’s been working out. He makes me miss football. There’s something about the camaraderie of a well-trained team and that pleasantly sore feeling after a game. Maybe that’s why he’s so adamant about finding some kind of martial art to do.

The waiter brings our food and I eat mine behind my hand even though my fangs don’t pop at all, partially through willpower and partially because I have more in me than I’ve had in a while. I’d gotten up early to charm rabbits and forgot to have lunch, so my stomach was definitely grumbling despite the blood meal. And it goes the opposite way, too, because I have routinely gone weeks without feeding but still ate two normal meals a day and while I probably actually gained weight I was still slowly dying.

It’s a strange, strange sensation, the feeling of your body shutting down entirely while you lay in your bed, watching the steady rise and fall of your sleeping roommate’s back. Wishing you could strike him like a match and breathe him in at the same time.

But today I’m full in all senses of the word. I pay for the food and we walk together back towards his flat, sticking to the shadows beneath shop awnings and trees. He’s talking about this trashy show he’s been watching while Penny is at uni, some kind of reality show where people get married without seeing one another and then have to learn to live together. It sounds absolutely _egregious_ , in a good way, and I am not going to tell him this, but I probably will binge it over the weekend.

The walk from the shopping district leads through a quiet, overcast housing area full of dark alleyways containing, at least that I could smell, mostly rats and cockroaches. But one, as we passed by, contained a problem. And if there’s anyone who cannot for the life of him pass by a problem, it’s Simon Snow.

There’s a pair of blokes in the alley and at first I didn’t think anything of it - who am I to question what consenting adults do in semi-public spaces - until Simon stops mid-sentence, staring down the alley with his mouth half open. And then I see that one of them is being held at knifepoint, and all that blood I’ve had lately drops into my feet.

“Hey!” Simon yells, squaring his shoulders. “Back off!” 

I can hear the magic he’s trying to put into those words, but instead of stepping back, the attacker’s head snaps toward the sound of Simon’s voice. He has a bandanna wrapped around his face, and a black denim jacket covering any kind of identifying mark, but Simon isn’t paying attention to that, he’s focused on the victim cowering against the cold stone wall and trying to think of how he can save him.

The man with the knife takes a step toward Simon, and I’m dropping my wand out of my sleeve and cupping it in my fist. At the ready, but not revealing it, not around Normals. Not unless I have to. But this would-be mugger isn’t exactly intimidated by a couple of college-age lads wearing gym shorts and business casual, respectively.

“I said back off!” Simon yells again, and I’m one hundred percent certain he is going to get shanked unless I say something. The wand is in my hand and I’m pulling my arm up, opening my mouth to cast **Stand your ground** or **Into thin air** , something to make this guy not open my boyfriend up in the middle of London, when, as if on cue, Simon’s wings pop back into reality, spread out behind him like a threat display.

The knife falls to the ground.

“ **_Get lost!_ **” I yell, and the attacker turns tail and bolts, footsteps echoing through the alleyway.

“Oh, shit,” Simon says, staring confusedly up at his wings, the point of his tail in one hand. “I guess it’s been about that long, huh.”

“Yes, yes, let’s focus on that and not the _other, definitely more important_ situation which needs to be dealt with, _now_ ,” I hiss, pointing my wand at the other Normal, who is now squatting on the ground with his hands over his head. He looks like he’s about our age, dressed in jeans with holes in the knees and a faded t-shirt with a band’s tour dates on the back.

“Are you okay?” I ask, crouching in front of him. “No injuries?”

He shakes his head, not meeting my eye.

“Good,” I say, glancing back at Simon, who is peeking around the corner to see if anyone is coming, I guess. 

Back to the Normal. “Did he take anything?”

The Normal shakes his head again.

“Okay,” I say. “Can you make it home?”

He nods. I hold out a hand to him and he takes it, and I help him to his feet.

“ **_There’s nothing to see here_ **,” I say, as the Normal looks towards Simon. His eyes glaze over for a moment, then focus somewhere across the street.

“Thanks for the help, you’re a hero,” the Normal says, waving as he walks away from me. “See you around.”

I wait until he makes it past Simon to cast **_That doesn’t ring a bell_ **, and watch as he stops abruptly, not sure what he’s doing in the middle of the sidewalk now, before shrugging and continuing on home.

“Well, we can only hope the attacker thinks he hallucinated a dragon-man in an alleyway and doesn’t start any rumours that would get us on trial with the Coven, _again,_ ” I say, crouching down to examine the knife. A cheap folding pocket knife with no interesting features. It looks dull but more than capable of injuring someone if the wielder desired it.

“That was the most excitement I’ve had in months,” Simon said, rocking up on his toes. “Felt good.”

I kick the knife underneath a nearby bin. “Most people would be shitting themselves after nearly getting in a knife fight.”

“Most people don’t have a vampire to back them up.”

I can hear footsteps approaching. “ _Most_ people also don’t have dragon wings. Come here; I’m not as good at pop culture spells as Bunce but it’ll last ‘til we get home, anyway.”

Simon lets me magic his wings away without complaint, the words of the spell clumsy on my tongue but functional enough. His extra appendages fizzle out into nothing as someone walks by, eyes to their mobile and not on us.

“That was close,” I start to say, when Simon grabs me by the lapels and shoves me back against the wall.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


There was absolutely no way that guy with the knife was getting anywhere near me, even if my wings and tail hadn't popped out and scared him shitless at the absolute most perfect time. I may be out of shape but I can still move faster than some street thug, and Baz is not only vampire-fast, but he can use magic.

And Merlin, can he use magic. He didn’t actually need to (because I’m still a capable combatant,) but he did, and I’ll never get tired of him using his commanding voice, arm outstretched, wand held loosely in his slender fingers. It’s a dramatic sight: the pose, his loud shirt, his hair in the breeze. I want to look at him like this all day. I want to tangle my fingers in his hair and kiss him until neither of us can breathe.

I’m proud of myself for at least waiting until we’re alone and my wings are gone before I go ahead and do that last thing.

I surprised him and that feels _fantastic_ , that split second of his eyes popping open and mouth hanging stupid and slack. It’s a rare sight for Baz Pitch to be stupid, and so far, I’m one of the only people whose seen him make that face. 

I can tell he’s full because he’s warm, warmer than he’s been in a while, but I can still feel the chill in his body beneath my hands, and I relish in feeling him grow warm against my skin. I can feel him hesitate to put his arms around me for a moment, then give in, not pulling me in but just resting his hands around my waist. And it’s comfortable like that, just the two of us, in that alley, him leaning down to meet me halfway and me finally feeling the puzzle piece snap into place.

  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


If getting into knife fights in alleys is the key to this continuing to happen, I will hire the thieves myself to keep him happy. Just don’t let him stop. Please don’t let him stop again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


It takes an extraordinary amount of willpower to let go of him. I would very much like to spend the rest of the evening kissing him in this alleyway but unfortunately I do have enough brain cells available to know that this is still, technically, a public space, and my wings will only stay hidden so long. We do, actually, need to get home at some point today. Which is devastating, emotionally.

Baz looks a little punch-drunk as I break us apart and step back, grinning. He spent a lot of time in school pushing all of my buttons and it feels like sweet revenge to finally know how to push his. It also helps that the only buttons he has are either vampire or me related, so I’m one of the only people on the planet able to push them.

I’m not feeling itchy and I’m trying to hold onto that feeling as I say “We should probably get going,” and turn back toward the street. Baz takes a moment but catches up within seconds, covering ground quickly with both vampire speed and longer legs than mine. He falls into step beside me, looking flustered.

“So is that it, you get off on danger?” He asks.

“It seems that way,” I say plainly.

“That makes. So much sense.” I watch him have approximately seventeen different trains of thoughts at once. “Is this what the whole kickboxing thing was about?”

“Kind of,” I say. “It was kind of an experiment.”

“To see if it got you randy?”

“Yeah, basically. All it got me was sweaty though.”

“But encountering a mugger in an alley…”

“I think,” I say slowly, trying to ignore the static starting to form in my head. “It’s the adrenaline rush. Or that whole thing where in movies people go through a life or death experience and immediately wanna shag afterwards? Or maybe I just like watching you fight. Every time it’s happened you’ve been there, too.”

“I think that’s just because I’m always with you, Snow.”

“I’m just hypothesizing.”

We walk quietly for a few heartbeats, then Baz smirks. “This is hilarious.”

“It’s not hilarious!”

“There is absolutely nothing about this that isn’t hilarious. Has this been going on the whole time? Like, every time I’d do something horrible to you, you’d have to go take a cold shower afterwards? Is that why you were always running so hot? Did you have the best wank of your life in my childhood bathroom that night after I tried to kill myself?”

I recoil physically. “No, fuck, Baz, why would I get turned on by that?”

“It was an emotional moment. _Literally_ heated. You got to be the hero and save my life. Figured it’d have some effect on you.”

“The effect it had on me came later. In your room. _After_ you stopped smelling like wildfire.”

“You never stopped smelling like wildfire,” Baz says, and it’s a strange thing to say but clearly means something because his eyes lose focus for a minute as he stares straight ahead.

“Baz,” I say, nudging him with my elbow. “Hey. Stay with me.”

He blinks, refocuses. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’d have probably happened anyway,” I say, glossing over yet another concerningly casual reference to his attempted suicide. “Even if you hadn’t…you know. It was only a matter of time before I realized that most people don’t obsess over their nemeses quite like I obsessed over you.”

He smiles again, and I can feel myself relax. “I think it might have taken a few more years,” he says. “You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met. Wouldn’t know a vampire if it kissed you on the mouth.”

I smile back. “I’d probably figure it out eventually.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I’m sitting on the edge of the bed when he gets out of the shower. I don’t even really know why I’m in here; I never come in here anymore unless Simon invites me, and it’s usually just to grab something or other anyway. I think I’d just followed him into his room out of habit. For a while it felt like we spent all of our time here, on this bed, Simon on top of me, not saying a word but getting quite a few points across. Then it was on the sofa, curled against my hip. Then it was on the opposite side of the sofa, turned away from me. I can’t remember the last time I slept here. The sheets used to smell like both of us but now they only smell of him. 

At least he’s sleeping in his room again. At least he wants to see the sun again. I can be thankful for that.

“Oh,” he says as he steps out of the bathroom, bringing with him a cloud of shampoo-scented steam.

I stand up and go to leave. “Sorry, I was just...” I can’t think of a lie. “I’ll let you get dressed.”

“You don’t have to,” Simon says. “You can stay.”

I don’t move. My back is to him but I can hear his footsteps as he pads across the carpeted room to the dresser and selects his pants and pyjamas, but no shirt. I know the sound of every drawer in that dresser. Bunce isn’t here to magic him into his clothes; night classes. I’m good at being an academic but I’ll never be like her; I don’t hate myself enough to go to school in the summer.

I still don’t look at him because I don’t know if I can, if I should, if I’m allowed. If it’s okay to want him still. If the illusion we’ve been trying so hard to build up will shatter at last and crumble around me. I hit on him at dinner but I can see the way his eyes narrow like he’s been slapped every time I do it, and I kick myself for it afterwards. So I stand there in the middle of his room staring at the string of fairy lights he’s got strung around the perimeter and try not to think about what I would do if I lost him.

His footsteps come up behind me and I start to walk towards the door again, like we’re going to step out together, into the sitting room to order pizza and watch Married At First Sight, but he wraps his arms around my waist instead and lays his head against my shoulder.

“Stay,” he says, softly, and probably only I could have heard him.

He’s warm against me, even though my shirt. The residual heat from the shower provides a familiar sensation, Simon Snow burning me up, through and through, like a furnace. Like a house fire. Like an atom bomb. I can feel his damp hair soaking through my collar but I would rather stake myself through my own unbeating heart than complain. A shirt is only a shirt. I can buy another thousand but I could never replace him if he leaves.

His hands are clasped at my waistband and I am counting the freckles on his arms because I don’t know what else to do. I want to put my hands on his but I don’t know if that’s too much, too little. If my cold would suck out his warmth and leave him distant again. He’s told me the pattern but I still can’t predict it, I still can’t see it.

“You’re warm today,” he says. “It feels good.”

 _Not as warm as you_ , I think. “I ate recently,” I say.

“You look like you’ve eaten a lot lately,” he says.

“I...have.” I stutter a little. I know I shouldn’t avoid talking about this anymore - not after the birds in the bathroom. The night my secrets were laid a little too bare before those I love (and one I barely knew,) - but it still makes me uncomfortable to say. To admit to consuming the blood of some other living creature, even if that’s what it means for me to stay alive.

“Good,” Simon says. “You look good.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

“Did you find somewhere new to hunt?”

“I’ve… been practicing not killing things,” I say, stuttering again. “When I feed.”

Fuck this hurts. All of it. His heat on my back, his hands at my waist, this conversation. His genuine interest in this part of me that I try my best to ignore until I’m forced to confront it or die. There’s no cross on Simon’s neck and there hasn’t been since the night in the woods, and some part of me is still scared that if I spiral too hard, if I go too long without feeding…

“So I’ve been...full,” I finish.

He picks his head up, rests his chin on my shoulder blade. “Did you do it?”

“A few times,” I say. “I’m getting better.”

I can feel his heart rate skyrocket. “How?”

“I can actually make my fangs go up,” I say. “It just kind of...disengages me. Stops the whole process.”

“Neat.”

“It makes me feel a little better about the situation, anyway,” I say, while I’m feeling open. Before I close up again and can’t let him in. Before I say something scathing and the moment is lost.

He stands up on his toes and leans over my shoulders, reaching up to shove his fingers into my mouth, turning my head more to face him. “I wanna see.”

“My fangs?”

“I wanna know where they go.”

It’s not hard to let them slide out. I just think about how warm he is and how his hands smell like steam and soap and cinnamon sugar and the smoke after a campfire’s long gone and died. How I can feel his heartbeat on my back. How easy it’d be to just bite down and taste him that way, too.

“Wicked,” he says, awestruck, pulling my lips back further to reveal the full extent of my shame. “They don’t seem to come from anywhere. There’s not a hole or anything.”

“I feel when they come out and go in,” I say, my mouth full of teeth and fingers. “It kinda hurts.”

“Like Wolverine,” he says. “Except you don’t bleed.”

We are both aware that I do bleed. It just isn’t _my_ blood. And it doesn’t flow like his does, hot and red through veins and arteries. Mine clots too quickly because I’m not alive. There’s nothing to pump it out if I get cut, or stabbed, or shot. So it just sits and congeals into black clumps and I wash it all off afterwards once the skin has healed over the wound completely. It only takes a couple hours. Usually.

He lets his hands fall slowly away from my face, fingers brushing my chest delicately. He’s still on his tiptoes, arms around my neck, his head leaning against the back of mine. I can hear his breath against my ear. And he’s still so very, very warm.

“Does this mean, since you can control it, that you…”

“No,” I say, cutting him off. “I’m not going to drink people. It just means I can drink cats without adding another poster to the light posts around your flat.”

"Not even if I asked?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


I can feel him growing warm under my hands everywhere I touch him. Even though he’s fuller than I’ve seen him in months, his skin soft and springy as I pull his lips open, he’s still cold. Colder than me. Cold enough that I can feel the warm spots left over by my fingers. I want to hold him to me until we are the same temperature inside and out, until I don’t know where I end and he begins.

My fingers touch his fangs and I can feel a tingling in my chest. That residual adrenaline running through my veins. It would be so easy for him to hurt me, to close his mouth over my hand and crush my bones between his teeth. To drive his fangs through my palm and sever my flesh, my tendons. But he doesn’t. He stands there and lets me poke and prod him and look him right in the part of himself that he hates most and he barely moves a muscle.

If I hadn’t been behind him I’d have kissed him, fangs and all. Venom be damned, if it even exists. If it can get in my mouth just from that, infecting me with the same curse. If it’s even a curse at all. How does a vampire Turn someone? Is it willingly? Are they like snakes, able to control the venom to inject when they want and not when they don’t? 

My mind wanders to the thought of him biting me, so I ask him if he would and he chokes.

“I...I…I don’t-” he stammers, body going rigid underneath me.

“It’s okay if _I_ ask, right?”

He steps forward, shrugging me off of his back, and turns to face me. He grabs my jaw in one hand, looking deep for something in my eyes. “Shit I’m sorry,” he says, and he looks like he’s going to cry. “I don’t know how Thrall works, I didn’t even know I was-”

I put a hand on his. “I’m not Thralled, Baz. I’m completely sober.”

He freezes again. I kiss him.

  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


There’s entirely too much going on in my mouth, between the fangs I didn’t quite get pulled back up yet and now Simon’s tongue, but he doesn’t seem to care and so neither do I. How could I possibly complain about this. About him. Doing this.

I’m too aware of him, of his heat, of his body. My head is spinning and I am not sure what way is up anymore. He’s pulling me further into the room, towards his bed, and all it implies. He’s not subtle but he never has been. Never giving me an inch. Never coming up for air. His knees hit the bed frame and he turns so he can push me gently onto the mattress, settling into my lap, knees around my waist. His wings spread up above us, filtering the faerie lights through them, casting us both in red.

Last time we did this I went too fast and scared him away. This time I’ll do nothing but follow, go nowhere he doesn’t lead. If that means lay still I’ll do it. If it means no touching I won’t. I’ll watch him move around me and it’ll be all I’ll ever need.

“I promised I wouldn’t bite you,” I say around him. “I can’t, I-”

“I give you permission,” he says, breathless, his lips still brushing mine. “However much you want, you can have it.”

“What if I mess up, Simon? I haven’t Turned an animal but what if it’s just because they aren’t human?”

“Then I’ll be a vampire, too.” He says it like it’s the simplest truth in the world.

“You don’t know what that means,” I say.

“It means I’ll have super strength, Kevlar skin, and I’ll have to drink blood to survive.” He kisses me again and he tastes like fire. “And it means I’ll have even more forever with you.”

I love him. Helplessly. Hopelessly. Overwhelmingly. He’ll be the second death of me and I’ll sing the whole way to hell.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


I told him I was sober but I don’t think that’s true anymore. Drunk on him or pheromones I really don’t know, nor do I care. He’s not touching me but I know he wants to, and I want him to touch me, too, so I grab his hands and lead them to my chest, inviting him to explore. We’ve done this, at least, before. This part doesn’t scare me.

Baz looks at me like I’m the sun and the stars, the temples of Rome, the mountains of Colorado, the waterfalls of the Amazon. Like I am greater than all the wonders of the world. He looks at me like we were in the Mummer’s Tower singing nursery rhymes, his hand in mine, creating the universe around ourselves from scratch. He looks at me like nothing else exists and I don’t really know what to do with it all. It turns to static in my brain and I close my eyes to block it out, push it down. Not now. Please not now. Not when we’re like this. Let me have this, just this once.

He touches me like I’m spun out of glass and his fingers will shatter me if he presses too hard. His arms wrap around me, palms flat against my back, the pads of his fingers sinking into the lines between the muscles I still have, even after all this time. Ghosting over the freckles and spots he seems to have memorized. Tracing patterns into my skin. I tilt my head up to catch my breath, his mouth shifting to my jaw. I can’t move, now, frozen in place, eyes closed as he lifts one of his hands to my cheek, rests the other on my shoulder.

I hear him take a deep, shaking breath.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I have never been more scared in my life.

The forest fire felt more safe. Being shut in a coffin less terrifying. The magical emptiness of the Humdrum’s Quiet Zones less panic-inducing than what I am doing _right now_.

Simon Snow, in my lap, his head thrown back to expose his neck, eyes shut, lips parted. All of him. Just for me.

I don’t know if anyone even listens to the prayers of vampires, but I say one anyway and close my mouth around his throat.

  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


It feels like a morphine drip. Like fire and ecstasy injected into my veins. A little prick then I stopped caring. He could have sucked me dry right there on the bed and I would have died happier than I’ve ever been.

Is it magic? Or is it Thrall? Some kind of paralytic drug in a vampire’s saliva to keep the donor still so they don’t rupture a vein? I couldn’t tell you. I feel like I’m floating and Baz is the only thing holding me down. The room around us fades away and all I feel is him. His hand shaking on my cheek. His short, shallow breaths on my neck. His tongue pressing against my skin as he swallows, and oh, _fuck_.

I don’t know what it feels like to lose a lot of blood at once. I’ve had draws for tests and stuff, but I’ve never been hooked up to one of the machines that you use when you give blood for transplant. Any wounds I took in battle either healed on their own or were closed for me by someone else. I don’t know what it means when your body feels like it drops out from underneath you and your head is full of clouds. I don’t know what it means when his tongue touches my neck again and it sends shockwaves down my spine.

 _I’m going to have a hickey,_ I think, weirdly. The thought of it is surprisingly distressing, and it's amusing, that this is what I’m choosing to worry about. Not that I might accidentally get turned into a Simon-shaped raisin, or wake up tomorrow with a hunger for raw steak. No, it’s that I’m going to have a bruise on my neck. A bruise I can very, very easily have him magic away for me.

He takes another draw from me ( _shit,_ that hits like lightning,) and pulls away, fangs already mostly gone by the time I can see his face. Not a drop of blood on his lips. He looks at me wild, eyes blown, like he’s seeing the secrets of the cosmos unveiled before him. Like he can’t believe what he’s just done.

“Was it good for you?” I ask, grinning, trying to do that thing with my eyebrow that he does when he makes shitty jokes like this. The moment’s ruined though as my head lolls back, the paralysis breaking.

He catches me before I fall, pressing me to him. He’s breathing so hard but there’s not a heartbeat, but I’m used to that. I’m used to him. He feels like he’s burning up against me, his face flushed down below his collar. I’ve never seen him blush before. I want to see how far it goes. 

My fingers feel like they’re made of jelly as I fumble with the buttons on his shirt, but he grabs my hands and pulls them away.

“No,” he says, softly.

He can’t lie to me and say he doesn’t want it. I’m sitting in his lap. “‘M not gonna freak out,” I say, slurring. I feel drunk on him. On whatever he put in me. I feel good. I want him to feel good.

“Not when you’re like this,” he says.

I’m annoyed but I can’t see straight anymore. My head is full of cotton and my hands don’t feel like they’re attached. He’s got me higher than I’ve ever been and he’s not even letting me fuck him. I hold his cheeks and kiss him, and his mouth tastes like iron. Is it cannibalism, to taste your own blood on the tongue of your vampire boyfriend?

I remember him lifting me up and laying me on the bed, then his lips against my temple as he whispers “Goodnight, Snow,” into my hair. Then the sound of the lights turning off, the bedroom door closing, and then silence.

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


It’s not yet light when I wake up, tucked in bed exactly how Baz left me. I feel hungover. Not like nauseated, or light sensitive, just thirsty. Just tired. A little dazed. Slight headache. Very shaky. This is probably why they give people cookies after they donate blood.

I’m not sure why I’m awake for a moment, until I hear the sink in the bathroom turn on. I think it’s Penny for a moment, brushing her teeth before going for a run or whatever she does in the morning before I wake up, until the bathroom door opens and cat-quiet feet step out. Baz.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he says as I roll over to face his silhouette. “Your bathroom is awkward.”

It’s a Jack-and-Jill setup; there's a door at the other end of the sink that leads to Penny’s room, but no access from the sitting room. I don’t know why they made this flat like this. It was the best one we could afford.

“It’s fine,” I say, sleep grinding in my throat.

He stares at me in the dark and I know he can see me clearly, in colour and detail, not how I see him: just a vague shape against the white wall, his knees the only thing illuminated by the streetlight through my half-closed blinds. He slept in his slacks.

“How do you feel?” He asks finally, his voice thick.

“Thirsty,” I say.

I can hear him inhale.

“Not like that. Just for water. Or a Coke. I’m a little shaky.”

“I’ll get you something.”

He comes back a moment later with a soda in his hand. I sit up and take it gratefully, gulping down half of it in one go, desperate for the sugar. The light-headed feeling wanes.

Baz just stands there, at arm’s length away not moving.

“What about you?” I ask.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I feel alive for the first time in fifteen years.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


He doesn’t say anything, just drops into a squat, so that his face is no longer in shadow. His hair is still black, his eyes are still gray. His skin is pale. But it isn’t _pallid_.

“Wow,” I say. I’m gaping but I can’t help it. He’s washed out by the green salt streetlight but I can still see colour in his cheeks, a new fullness to his features. I wonder if he feels different. If he weighs more. If he has a heartbeat.

I reach out and touch his face and Crowley he’s so incredibly warm.

“Wow,” I say again, and I feel idiotic but I can’t help it. It’s too much of a mouthful to say any of the seventy thoughts flying through my brain: That he looks like he’s glowing. That he’s never been more beautiful than he is right now. That I love him more than anything in the world.

He sucks air through his teeth and leans forward. “That left a mark,” he says, and he’s talking about my neck. I can’t see it, but it’s not even sore. When I put my fingers to the spot I can feel the indentions but it just feels like old scars.

“It doesn’t hurt,” I say.

“It’s a whopping big bruise, though.”

“I don’t think it’d bother Penny. She’ll probably give us a high-five.”

“You can very clearly see it’s a vampire bite,” he says.

“ _Two_ high-fives.”

“I don’t really want _any_ high-fives,” he says, and leans forward. I’m about to ask him what he’s doing when he says **_Kiss it better_** softly before pressing his lips to the mark on my neck. It tingles, the magic whisking away the blood under my skin, closing up the pockmarks. 

He leaves his head on my shoulder.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


It’s astounding, how I feel. Like I’ve just seen the sun again after the longest, hardest winter on record. Like I’ve been blind for twenty years and suddenly the scales have dropped off. Like I haven’t been living until now.

I notice my vision first. I have always been able to see in the dark, but now it’s like upgrading to 4K. The lines are crisp, the colours brighter. I can see every freckle on Simon’s chest as he looks up at me from his bed. Every whorl in his eyes as he touches my face. Every curled strand of his hair cascading over his forehead.

I can hear his heart beating. Hear the rush of the air into his lungs. I can hear his eyes stick together a little with sleep when he blinks. I can smell the shampoo he used last night, the detergent he used on his clothes. All so vivid and almost too much.

I couldn’t imagine Vegas like this. Just this room at night with him alone is making me light-headed.

“Are you gonna do it again?” he asks, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me closer to him, so I’m kneeling at the edge of his bed.

“Can’t,” I say.

“Scared?” He asks, and I don’t have to ask of what.

I shake my head, press my face into the crook of his neck. “Same reason you can’t donate to the Red Cross more than once a month. You need time to fill back up.”

Part of me aches to know it. That I can’t have him whenever I want. I don’t know how long the effect of it will last, this feeling of flying. I know why my kind seem so desperate for it now, and I’m afraid, a little, that I’ve crossed some threshold I’ll never be able to return from. That I’ll always yearn for it when it’s gone. I’ve had my taste and now I crave him. I’ll never get enough.

Please don’t let me cock this up again.

The predawn light catches his curls like quicksilver as he pulls me up into his bed, laying me down next to him. His lips on mine again, filling my senses, overwhelming. Fingers trailing up my back, carding through my hair. I don’t know if I can touch him so I hesitate, but he’s not flinching as I kiss him back, so I hold his face and press into him, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.

“Baz,” he says into mouth. “I’m not drunk anymore.”

He recites the alphabet backwards and forwards to prove it. His eyes are dilated but clear. I have no reason to doubt that he’s telling the truth.

He threads our legs together and closes what little space there was left between us.

“I thought you needed danger,” I breathe, when he lets me.

He pushes a finger against my lips until they part. “ _You’re_ dangerous,” he says.

I feel like I will never know his rules, but I will never say no to him, not even once.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


I can’t get over how warm he is. How golden his skin looks. If this is what I can do for him I’ll put myself on tap. I’ll keep blood on ice whenever he wants it. I’ll drain myself of everything and give it all to him. It’s not like I need it anymore.

He lets me roll on top of him, holding myself up on my elbows, my hands still in his hair. Our bodies line up perfectly evenly, like we’re made for one another. He’s pliable underneath me, not pushing or pulling. Just taking what I give in stride. Playing it safe. 

I hate that I’ve hurt him but love that he’s willing to follow so that he doesn’t hurt me back. Again.

He’s still wearing his shirt though it’s wrinkled and untucked, his belt left somewhere in the sitting room. My hands don’t chill as I slide them from his waistline to his chest, bunching up the fabric of his shirt around my elbow. When was the last time I saw him without one? Nebraska, with a chest full of lead? I can’t feel any scars anymore. It’s like it never happened at all.

I prop myself up with my wings and finish what I started earlier in the night, unbuttoning the buttons of his shirt one by one, and this time, he lets me. He pushes up off of the mattress to allow me to slide the shirt off of his shoulders and arms, watching me move like he’s in a trance. Like I’ve still got some kind of magic in my fingertips that affects him and only him.

His hands rest at his sides and he watches me, waiting to see what I do, waiting to know how he should follow.

“I’m not going to break,” I say, and I can see his face twist into something like guilt. But finally, after a heartbeat, he reaches up and touches me. Starting at my shoulders and down my arms, my chest, my stomach. Resting at my hips. Asking permission for more. I lift myself onto my knees and give it.

“Simon,” he breathes.

“It’s fine,” I say, and put one hand on his, pushing it down. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m hot all over but I’m not suffocating, and everything is okay right now.

This is as far as it’s gone before. Last time he touched me I panicked, the static filling my head and closing my throat. I thought I wanted it. I did want it. But something kept me back. Every time he’d initiate my head would scream _stop, stop, stop_ , and I know it hurt him. It’s why he waits for me in everything. It’s why his hands are on my knees even though my clothes are on the floor

I pull them up my legs, trying to tell him it’s okay. This time, I promise, it’s okay.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


He’s got freckles on his thighs I’ve never seen before. His body is like a work of art in a museum I was never allowed to admire except from afar. I watch with amazement as his fingers lift the velvet rope and grants me access I was too scared to ask for, moves my hands to places I’ve never touched. I’m scared I’ll chip the marble but if this is my only chance, I’ll take it.

I’ll take him, anything he gives. I’m a starving fool.

He leans forward and tugs on the belt loops of my slacks and I’m guessing that’s his way of saying he wants me out of them, so I oblige. I realize halfway through the action that I should have tried to make it sexy, to hook my thumbs in my waistband and shake my arse like they do in the movies, but instead he gets the Baz Pitch special: me lifting him up on my hips and writhing unattractively as I try to just get my trousers off as quickly as possible.

And then we’re just. Here. In Simon’s bed. Together. He’s straddling my legs with his wings up behind him, and I’ve got my hands on his thighs. It feels like my eyes can magnify themselves, zoom in on the details of him, and I’m counting the constellations all the way to his face, committing them to memory.

I want to grab him by the neck and pull him down on top of me. I want to feel his skin against mine. All of him. All of me.

He closes the gap between us and this is the first time he’s touched me and it doesn’t feel like I’m burning.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


I could look at him all night. I think I might, for a minute. But then I notice how he’s looking at me, his chest heaving, and it’s impossible to resist.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I want, either, really. I mean, him, obviously, but I can’t think what I want _specifically_. I’m really just glad I want it at all. That him this close to me doesn’t feel like the air being sucked out of the room, leaving me choking. I wish I knew what we did right this time to end up here, but just being here is enough, for now.

I always imagined it’d be like in fanfic, you know, where you know exactly what part of the other person you want where. His fingers inside me. My mouth on his cock. But instead it was just this general desire to grind down into him and feel him move against me.

He pulls me into a kiss and I’m thankful for something other than my awful frotting technique to focus on. I’m not sure if either of us are actually good at kissing (I mean, I’ve kissed Agatha, but that was nothing like kissing Baz. Not even in the same ballpark,) but it’s at least something we’ve done before. His mouth is familiar, already charted territory, something to relax into, find a rhythm. It’s easy to lose myself in him, his arms draped around my neck, one hand tangled in my hair. I grind down into him and he groans, arching up into me.

Then he pulls away from me, pushing me up by the collarbones so he can focus on my face. Holds me there for a second.

“How far do you want to go?” He asks, his voice wavering just a little.

“I don’t know,” I say. “This is okay, though.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Is it okay if this is all we do?”

He laughs and it’s so genuine my heart hurts. “Shit, Simon, we passed the threshold of ‘what would make my life worth having lived should I die tomorrow’ the second you pulled me into your bed, but yes, it is okay if this is all we do.”

The sun is rising fast. There’s light spreading over his face and glittering off of his hair, spread out around his head like a halo. A picture-perfect fallen angel, carved from stone.

He doesn’t ask for anything, so I give him everything I can.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


Have you ever spent so long wanting something you convinced yourself you couldn’t have, that when you finally got it, after years and years of telling yourself not to get your hopes up, to find something else to think about, it didn’t feel real? That the feeling of it in your hands was like a dream, and you just knew that you’d wake up soon and it would all disappear. That outside-of-the-body sensation, that static in your head, that certainty that this wasn’t happening. That you’d never be so lucky as to get to be with him. To have him look at you like you’re the centre of his universe and you hold the stars in your hands.

That’s how it felt to have him ask me if this was enough. As if _anything_ wouldn’t be enough. I was ready to die with nothing, the closest I’ll have ever gotten was across the room, watching him sleep. _This_ is like being handed the keys to heaven and told that you've made it.

“Sit up,” Simon says, and I do, leaning against the headboard of his bed, back supported by his pillows. He’s still in my lap, and we’re still naked, somehow farther apart but closer at the same time. He laces his fingers together with mine and brings my hand to rest against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat through his skin.

He’s got the hands of someone who was born holding a sword, substantial and broad, his skin worn but not rough. The foil of mine, long and delicate like my mother’s, made for holding violin bows and crystal wine glasses. They look odd laced together like they are now, but the spaces between our fingers fit perfectly together.

He kisses the back of my hand before bringing it down between us, directing my fingers to wrap around his cock.

I feel like I don’t exist. That I’m really somewhere far away, looking down at myself in third person. I close my hand around him and Simon exhales sharply, folding in a little. He holds himself up against the headboard with his left hand and his right brushes against mine on its way to join the party. He’s shaking. I don’t know how to make him stop.

Both of us are clumsy as we try to stroke one another in time, never really matching up. But his chin’s dropped to his chest and his breath is hitching in a way I haven’t heard before. I tried to look down but it was too much, the muscles in my thighs aching as I fought the urge to move my hips. So I leaned my head back instead, looking up at the ceiling. Finding the patterns in the texture. Trying to hold out a little bit longer.

I try to do to him some of the things I enjoy doing to myself but I don’t know if it’s really working. It’s different from this angle. The muscle memory is wrong. I don’t think he’s really thinking anymore, just moving on pure instinct like he always does. His wings have fallen down by his sides, cascading red across the sheets. I’m trying to focus on anything else but the world is starting to blur around the edges.

“Simon,” I say, trying to give him a warning, tell him to slow down, but if anything he gets bolder. He looks up at me, panting with the effort, and that’s it. That does it. I nearly give myself a concussion as my head slams into the headboard behind me.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Simon**

  
  


Baz lets go of me as he comes, probably so he doesn’t accidentally rip my dick off with his crazy vampire strength. Which I’m thankful for, because his other hand is on my knee and he squeezes it so tightly I think he’s going to pop a tendon. He looks like he’s snarling, teeth bared, eyebrows knit so deeply he almost has a wrinkle. Then his mouth falls open and he takes one more gasp of air before seizing up again. And again.

Doing that makes me feel powerful again. Like I’m the one with the Thrall. To reduce someone like him, stoic and untouchable, to this with just my hands.

He’s swearing as he comes down and I want to kiss him but I also don’t want him to suffocate. I want to get myself off but my hand is gross now and I can’t use **Clean as a whistle** anymore.

His eyes flutter open and he looks up at me, glazed. His mouth looks full and I wonder if his fangs popped or if his lips are just swollen from abuse. The thought of him losing that much control because of me makes my head buzz in a completely new way. I put his hand back around me and remind him what he was doing, to finish what he’s started. What I started for him.

It doesn’t take long before I’m bowing over him, groaning his name into his shoulder like there’s magic in the syllables. Maybe there is. I wouldn’t know.

Baz once told me I had witchcraft in my tongue but it’s him who’s rummaged around his trousers to find his wand and taken care of the evidence for me. A year ago it’d have sent me down a dark path to think about, having to rely on someone else's magic. Now it’s just an empty sort of ache. One of having mourned the loss and moved on from it as best I can.

The birds are singing and the sun’s mostly risen, but I want nothing more than to fall asleep next to him for a few more hours. I curl myself into his side and bury my face against his neck. He smells sweaty now, but in a good way. He’s still warm. I wonder how long that’ll last. How many days until it’s back to me warming him, with my hands or my body, either one.

I don’t really get to think about it for long before the rise and fall of his chest and the heat of the afterglow lulls me to sleep.

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


###  **Baz**

  
  


I wake up to a key in the front lock. It sounds like I’m lying directly next to the goddamn knob, and for a second I wonder who moved the bed into the sitting room before I remember that I’m firing on all cylinders for the first time in my life and therefore everything is just so goddamn loud.

I can hear Bunce swearing at her keyring outside. Through two shut doors.

“I swear to Stevie I’m going to go to the front office and complain,” she grumbles, then exclaims, “Fucking finally,” as the key seats into the lock and the knob finally turns.

“Lock trouble?” I ask, stepping out of Simon’s room nonchalantly as I can. Vampire speed is good for throwing on your trousers and a shirt in seconds, but it is not necessarily good for seeing what you are doing. I’m pretty sure this shirt isn’t mine, judging by how it fits.

Penny gives me a look. “This is the shittiest key I have ever used in my life, and I’m not allowed to have a copy made. I have to go to admin and have them give me a new one, but they’re only open at four AM on Leap Day, apparently.” She huffs and hangs her keys on the holder by the door. “Usually Simon lets me in if it’s being difficult.”

“He’s still asleep,” I say.

“It’s nearly twelve-thirty!” She exclaims, checking her mobile to confirm. “What were you _doing_ all night?”

She looks up at my face. Which I’m pretty sure is making a very unfortunate expression. “Actually don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”

“Probably for the better,” I say.

She throws her rucksack onto the couch and makes her way into the kitchen, casting **_Some like it hot_ ** on the kettle over her shoulder as she rummages through the fridge. I make her tea like I know she likes it and she sets out sandwich ingredients on the counter. There’s not a table in the breakfast nook - if they aren’t eating at their desks in their rooms, we’re in front of the television, like normal Millennials.

“You look good,” she says, studying me as I pour milk into two cups. “Bright.”

“I’ve been eating well,” I say, and hand her one of the cups. “I finally figured out how to feed without killing things.”

Her eyebrows threaten to escape her face. “Holy shit, Baz, good job!”

I shrug. “Would’ve been nice to know it was possible while I was in school.”

“It’s still good that you’ve learned it now.”

I drink my tea. She makes me a sandwich. I can tell she’s trying very hard not to pry but her curiosity gets the best of her in the end.

“Does Simon know?” she asks, handing me my sandwich.

I don’t answer immediately. “Yes.”

“And?”

“He is proud of me, too.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **Penelope**

You can’t lie to me, Basilton Grimm-Pitch. I’ve done my research. I know what it means when a vampire can blush.

**Author's Note:**

> me: i don't have an oral fixation  
> also me: (writes this)
> 
> follow my other exploits on twitter @[kataouatche](https://twitter.com/kataouatche) and tumblr @[cataouatche](https://cataouatche.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
